Missing any special occasions?: No my life is boring at the minute as I have retired from

football. This is a great time to do this!

Role in the camp: Joker

Miss most: Luxuries including my bed!

Dream camper: Mickey Rourke

Relationship status: Engaged

After retiring from football, former Wigan player Jimmy Bullard has been looking for a new challenge – and he thinks sleeping in the wild and eating cockroaches will fill the void.

Smiling, the 36-year-old says he hopes going on I’m A Celebrity will send him on a different path as he looks forward to his jungle adventure. And he has promised to definitely liven things up around the campfire by playing pranks on his fellow contestants.

Indeed Jimmy – who played for teams including Wigan, Hull City and Fulham – is famous for his great sense of humour and in the past he has filled a team-mate’s car with water, ‘launched’ an assistant manager into a canal, run up a £5,000 bill on his manager’s hotel room, let off so many appliances, deductions started to appear on his wage slip marked ‘fire extinguisher’ and elevated the art of ‘Ralgexing’ — a vintage dressing-room prank featuring muscle-rub cream in unexpected places — to a whole new level.

Laughing Jimmy says: “People call me the joker but that is just how I am. I like to play up in front of people. I like to entertain and I always seem to find time for a prank! I am not going to sit there and mope around. That is not me. Call me the joker, the prankster or the boy who doesn’t sit still! I am always looking for attention – yes that is me!

“There won’t be any boring times as I will make sure there isn’t!

“I am a big fan of the jungle and I always watch it every year. This is too good a chance to let go. I am retired now and I am not doing a lot. I am stuck in the middle really and something good could come out of this. It could lead me on a different path in life.’

He thinks his fellow footballers won’t be able to quite believe he has gone in the jungle.

Admits the sportsman: “A lot of my mates won’t believe I am in there. They will go ‘no! What is he up to now?!’

“My family can’t believe I’m doing this either. There are a lot of emotions and feelings and I will miss them lots but this is such a great opportunity.”

And he readily confesses that playing against a premiership team is far easier than undertaking some of the jungle trials.

“I didn’t find my football hard at all,” he says. “It was a boyhood dream and the jungle is totally different. There are two sides to me. One goes ‘you have to go in the jungle Jim, don’t let this opportunity go’. The other goes ‘why the hell are you doing it?!’ I hate snakes, spiders, everything. I don’t like one coming near me, let alone touching me or me having to put it in my mouth!’

Jimmy thinks sleeping rough will be particularly hard. “I will miss my luxuries. I will miss my bed and a roof over my head,” he adds. “I won’t miss my phone though or my social networking. Food is a big thing too. I will find the lack of food hard. I have never been put in this kind of position before and so I don’t know how I will react. But other people out there do have similar lives to the kind of life you lead in the jungle and so that is another reason for doing this.”

Are there any trials he will point blank refuse to do? He shakes his head.

“I am petrified of animals and I am determined not to refuse the trials,” he explains. “But there again, if lasagne is put in front of me rather than a cockroach, then it’s going to be hard to turn the lasagne down!”

Roaring with laughter, he confesses he hasn’t done any preparation in the run-up to his jungle adventure. “I’m going to go in there and have a laugh. I want to make some new friends too,” reveals Bullard. “Previous celebrities have said they have been on a fabulous journey and I want to take everything.”

He pauses, smiles and then adds: “I am a greedy sod. I want to absorb everything!”

And the jovial ex-footballer says he has vowed to try not to cry in the jungle. “I don’t think I will get emotional and to get me in tears if someone upsets me is impossible,” pledges Jimmy. “But other celebrities have cried and you know they aren’t like that normally. When you are hungry and cold, your mind plays funny tricks…”

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